The current split in Minnesota’s congressional delegation reflects the country’s deep, complicated divide over opening international markets. With negotiations ongoing for trade deals in Europe and Asia that will affect 60 percent of the global economy and more than half of U.S. trade, everyone agrees that what happens is very important. But that often seems to be the only thing they agree on.

“We’ve been through this so many times over the past 25 years,” said University of Minnesota economist Tim Kehoe. “The same issues get brought up time after time.”

Raised, he added, but never resolved.

At issue is whether free trade helps or hurts American workers. Both sides insist they have the numbers to make their case.

With America home to only 5 percent of the world’s consumers, American manufacturers “can’t sustain, much less grow, jobs without access to markets outside the U.S.,” said Linda Dempsey, vice president of international economic affairs for the National Association of Manufacturers. The association’s board includes officers of three of Minnesota’s biggest companies — Cargill, 3M Co. and UnitedHealth Group Inc. Other groups pushing free trade list among their members three other major Minnesota-based businesses: Medtronic Inc., Target Corp. and General Mills Inc.

Lori Wallach, director of the global trade-watch program at the consumer group Public Citizen, counters that free trade agreements have not opened foreign markets for the U.S. but have instead increased trade deficits that cost American jobs. She said the split over free trade “is not a partisan divide so much as a ­corporatist-populist divide.”

Wallach says Public Citizens keeps a database of workers the government has certified as displaced by “trade adjustment” since 1994. In mid-2013 that number stood at 845,000, with 39,251 from ­Minnesota.

In contrast, Paulsen, one of Congress’ most avid free traders, points to 750,000 Minnesota jobs now supported by foreign sales. The state’s growing international trade “leads to more jobs and a healthier economy for Minnesota,” Paulsen said.

Nolan, who questions free trade agreements as vocally as Paulsen promotes them, disagrees. “So-called free trade creates a fundamental unfairness over the lifetime of an agreement,” Nolan said. “We tell American workers to go and compete with countries that don’t pay living wages.”

These dueling viewpoints define much of the debate for policymakers as negotiations proceed on the 11-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the 28-country Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP).

But there is also the issue of trade promotion authority. The Obama White House, like Republican and Democratic administrations before it, wants dispensation from normal legislative processes in order to negotiate trade agreements that Congress can approve or disapprove, but cannot amend.

Paulsen, Kline seek middle way

Paulsen, who is set to launch a TTIP congressional caucus next week, and Kline support a new House bill that gives Congress a bigger say in setting trade objectives, but still allows only a yes-or-no vote and no amendments to the deals the executive branch strikes.

“Tariffs are not the only barriers to trade,” said Devry Boughner Vorwerk, Cargill’s director of international business relations. “In fact, non-tariff barriers are the most harmful to U.S. companies in foreign markets. It is important that trade deals address the other forms of protection that governments apply to keep out U.S. goods, capital and services.”